Jabberwocky
18 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
DISCLAIMER: Girl is in a rainy-day mood – what does that even mean? Rain fills her with a happy melancholy that may or may not occasionally veer off into the blues, but it’s all good – and useful. Sometimes drippy sunless weeks make her dig through the laundry basket for her freak flag, and then things get fun. Hang with her if you want – she’ll be gentle – please keep your hands and feet inside the roll-cage at all times until the ride comes to a complete stop.
Roaming around her usual haunts this gray morning she’s laughing at all the prime new humor – the day-making kind because so.spot.on.
If it rains long enough, a bit of introspection sets in. After intense moments of spiritually-guided meditation over at least a five minute period today, all of her senses are telling her that she is salt in her community, with a well-honed bent toward rebellion. Cool. She has been seen and known.
Here’s a creative thing she does when she finds herself on the verge of punching bunnies in the face ’til they cry little bunny tears: She ponders the statistical probability that there are Others who are occasionally visited by weirdly unhinged storylines and who willingly entertain thoughts of same. This insight simultaneously encourages, appalls, and confuses her – and brings up a fun question: Who here is willing to admit that they, too, are Desktop OCD? If you write, how much power do your computer screen, your actual desktop, your direct surroundings add to that experience? Can you fully relax if not all of those things are in sync? Oh. Well, yeah, she can too (we assume), it’s just that she prefers it this other way.
When all her little proggies play nicely together, the soothing yet stimulating colors and designs cause her brain to overflow with copious, astonishing story ideas, hahahaha, yeah, no. But she’s happy, god knows, and nobody gets hurt. Are you out there, Dear Reader, kindred spirit? Don’t leave our girl alone in the universe. Say you do this, too, or something equally obsessive. Please show your work.
(S)he had a face like a blessing … *
04 Apr 2016 2 Comments
*Cervantes
Last month a friend added me to a Facebook group, an action that would ordinarily raise the hair on my neck except for who connected me and to which group. I like to be asked first, but if you actually know me you can probably slip that cheese past me without an implosion. Oh, but hoo-boy, the misguided adds I’ve quietly tiptoed out of! What was it about my posts over the past eight years that revealed a secret affinity for Home Canning groups, Fundie Prayer-Chains, or a support page for Nursing Mothers? {Hypothetical examples to spare the guilty, who clearly did not know me.}
This new page, though, is serendipity – all about women and faces and selfies. One of those things is not like the others. Women and faces = good. Selfies = I suck, both at taking them and accepting the results. But happily, this is all ABOUT acceptance – for ourselves and other women. Without camouflage, before coffee, after a run, in sadness, elation, frustration (!!), other women’s faces are endlessly beautiful to me and seeing them every day is showing me more about genuine acceptance of my own features than anything I’ve encountered until now. If they can all be real, why would I think I couldn’t? When someone shares a shot that’s possibly less than bare-faced, I think “No, please, show us your genuine, natural, beautiful self, the one who can trust her sisters.” So maybe I could dare hope my sisters would think the same on seeing photos of me.
Over the past decade or so my body has been in the process of betraying me, but even at that we’re better friends than back when my pudding-stage brain thought I was such an irresistible speck of humanity. I’m getting pretty comfortable in this body with this face on it, but my selfies still shock me every time. “Hello, Me, this is what we really look like now from the outside, can you believe this shit?” I choose to blame it on Bad Inanimate Face because Resting Bitch Face sounds so ugly and judgy. Pretty sure two things are at work here to make me uncomfortable with my own shots:
- It’s MY face in the viewfinder.
- Selfies allow me to study my face in a way that invades my personal space and hurts my feelings.
But…sigh…the suggestion is that we each post a selfie every week for a year and write something positive about every photo we share, which I think is delightful advice, in theory. I’ve managed one so far – right now I’m busy drawing from other women the inspiration to be as naked as they are. Faces, guys, naked faces. As you were.
And being real at every stage of life is all that matters.
“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” – Abraham Lincoln
The Watchers
01 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
walls what
did you see
when the riders came up mass
did you hear
and want to warn
did your windows weep
your stones cry out
did survival root you
fill your clefts with balm
for scholar and bum
set you as watchers
over revelry and mayhem
over life
.
JSmith 4/1/16
Mass Street in Lawrence, Kansas, is a world unto itself. Some of its buildings were here before Quantrill’s Raid in 1863, and they’re works of art in my eyes. They embody so much of the spirit of the place – strength, longevity, resilience, the quiet joy of being free to be. They’re lovely to look at in every season.
Things are all screwed up …
31 Mar 2016 4 Comments
You know, you can be operating in full-scale denial mode and still pick up on things pertaining to precisely what you’re ignoring. For example, I’m noticing a whole subculture in terminology that hadn’t resonated with me until just recently. Today in the AARP Bulletin {Hey! The smug grin was uncalled for – the rag was in the mail, who can fathom how or why!} this sentence jumped off the page at me – “People think of ‘elderly’ as this gray plane, as if [older people] are all the same and shouldn’t be seen.” Wow, cold, dude.
So we have da’ yooths, who so far as we know all think and behave alike, and then ya’ got yer generic interchangeable old farts, which why are they even allowed off the grounds on their own? In the middle we have The World of Everybody Else, a world which neither youth nor old-fartism is expected, nor particularly welcomed, to grasp. Nothing personal, most likely, in most cases, just a perception – one that’s always existed and probably always will unless future technology gives us ways to read each other’s thoughts and feelings. People in the know are pretty sure the young and the old are not part of their ranks, a perception that clearly cheats the world to an astounding degree.
I had two remarkable grandmothers who were as different from each other as chalk and cheese, and each of them managed to get across to me the reality that we stay who we are on the inside all our lives while our bodies go to shit around us. One grandma, forever young, accomplished that by example, the other through stories. One night in her 80s, that grandma dreamed she was nineteen again and danced all night in a long flowing skirt and a sparkling-white Maidenform bra. Advertising in the psyche, man, but it was clear how real it all still was in the light of day. Her disappointment that it was only a dream was palpable even to a self-absorbed cheerleader-head, but the gut-punch was when she said “It was so wonderful – my body was as young as the real ME again!” That one stuck.
You can’t convince some folks that people under 18 are, indeed, people, and you can’t break the idea that after a certain age we’re all disposable. But you can try.
Focus on Spring!
14 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
Playing with a headline checker this morning and finding that a passing grade is hard to earn — my words don’t meet the parameters for drama, bite, and maximum grabbiness. However, since I’m not selling anything I find that level of failure acceptable. Happy Spring to you, whether it’s early or late in your world!
Sit here by me …
06 Mar 2016 2 Comments
Hey, hi, if you’re new to my blog and wondering how you got here, wondering if you want to stay here, wondering what’s for lunch, I’m here to help. 1.) I have a page called ABOUT that you can take a look at and I hope you will because it has its moments, but it tells you mostly about me, which why wouldn’t you want to know? However, it probably gives you not much clue as to what my BLOG is about, which may have been what you were wondering. 2.) Nor can I personally give you much clue as to what my blog is about because it ends up being about pretty much everything. 3.) Lunch is not my problem. I lied about helping.
If you sort of collect food blogs, this isn’t that, even though I go off the rails and post a recipe once in a while because although I haven’t cooked in close to fifteen years it’s like riding a bicycle and it’s always fun to find recipes I know would be fabulous, hand them to Kim, and sit down and eat them. That shit never gets old. Hint: A respectable food blogger would not share recipes, techniques, ingredients he/she hadn’t personally tested. I have no such scruples, so cook at your own risk.
Do you love book blogs? Books are precariously near the top of my list of loves, but this isn’t a book blog, I just hold forth sometimes on things I’ve read that end up making my bravo list. If you’re looking for erudite literary fellowship and enlightenment I’m not your girl, sorry not sorry, there are plenty of those guys and girls out there to call on. I read what I like and write what I know. Chances are good that since you found me we share a few of the same tastes and/or philosophies, and that’s always a rush — that ZOT!! of connection.
Playing for Time isn’t a self-improvement blog, but if growth happens for me in the process of writing — BONUS. And if in some small way my invaluable insights affect you through osmosis and you benefit, I expect a cut.
This is emphatically not a fitness blog, bwahahahaha!! If you follow me very long you’ll know why that’s funny.
Not a travel blog, either, although I think I’d be darling at it. Once we settled into our happy place in our happy town, leaving on a jet plane doesn’t sound like as much fun as it used to be. THAT’S BECAUSE IT ISN’T. What a Not-Happy Place for man or beast. So yeah, I’m not jetting around the globe dashing off travel reports to my publisher that are stream of consciousness and sparkling with wit. Crap.
Not a self-defense blog. HA! (See fitness, lack thereof.)
Not a relationship blog, even though that’s up there above books in my stack of good stuff. I’m still figuring it all out myself … so no … relationship gets talked about quite a bit here, but not on the advice end of things, so no worries.
There are obviously a lot more things my blog isn’t than things it is, so I’m caught lying to you again because I told you that “it ends up being about pretty much everything.” By which I meant, of course, everything I want to make it about. Tomorrow I’ll post links to a few of the pieces I’ve written — it can be frustrating trying to find something that interests you. And maybe these won’t but they’ll be ones I sort of like.
I’m glad you’re here and I hope you’ll talk to me in comments.
Emergecy, emergecy!!
24 Feb 2016 4 Comments
Not a typo, a quote from my baby nephew back in the day. It’s a thing, friends.
Pre-retirement, Kim crawled home from his soul-killing job as a service writer one day, burst into the house, and yelled “Read me something from the Bible, quick, before I go back and kill somebody.” Yes, darling, I feel ya’.
Today is that day again in Smithville, so I’m asking y’all to throw me a bone, a carp, ANYthing. We talked about books the other day … now I’m asking for your go-to when you just can’t even. Do you rage, cry, throw things, hide out in a book, drink, talk … what works?? I mean WORKS. NO PLATITUDES or I will rage, cry, and throw things at you after drinking and before hiding in a book.
I’m usually pretty good at the Zen, the calm, the considered, the adulting, but sometimes I’m not, so sue me. When you wake up pissed, everything hurts, idiots are still getting away with murder in all its iterations, the music in your head is relentless, the construction asshole who’s been tearing up the parking lot with the big honkin’ telehandler against all admonitions is still at it big as life and twice as natural, and people need your help but you have nothing left in reserve, WHAT DO YOU DO? Please. Dangle a rope if you have one.
But first:
- I understand nothing lasts forever — I’m about as old as God this morning and I’ve been there.
- Things are never as bad as they seem. (See #1)
- You’re blessed, fed, clothed, housed, and people love you, dammit.
- Look at all the people who have shitty lives but aren’t complaining.
- Okay, whatevs. Did you never, ever, at any time wish you could turn in your human card?
Just give me whatcha got, I’m not fit for man nor beast until the storm blows over … and the Flying Monkeys are clamoring to be unleashed.
On cleanliness and opportunity …
15 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
Conditions in the broken-bone sector have improved enough that spa-tub soaks are again in the picture and after several weeks’ worth of spit baths, sink baths, and whimper-laden assisted showers, basking in hot water and bubbles up to my armpits is the height of ecstasy. It’s the shiznit for sore muscles but beyond that it feels wonderful to be clean all over again.
Luxuriating in all that therapeutic goodness makes me acutely conscious of my fellow travelers who lack access to basics like showering, washing hair, brushing teeth, stepping into a clean set of clothes. Inevitably, after days, weeks, and months on the street they’re cringing inside a filthy threadbare meat suit that reeks of underbelly and in no way represents their spirit, but it’s what everybody sees. After just a month of enforced immobility and minimal hygiene I’ve been dismayed to find my skin taking on a slightly gritty texture and rejecting its host, namely me. The nails on my usable hand are constantly grubby simply because I can’t do this right now …
But because I ordinarily have access to all the soap and water I’m big enough to handle, I can start every new day clean, lotioned from head to toe, wrapped in clothes that smell like fabric softener and fresh air, and that alone means I don’t have to justify my needs to everyone I meet, or fight for my right to exist. I have the luxury of owning words and concepts like these:
… and it makes all the difference. Healing happens easier, quicker, better, and it’s a fact that as I roll through life the advantages I enjoy and the possibilities that are open to me are fairly limitless. It seems apropos to acknowledge that once in a while …
… because none of it comes with a lifetime guarantee.
Make it shtahp!
12 Feb 2016 2 Comments
Talk to me, friends, this is getting wackadoodle. Ever since the recent ice capades on the balcony, my life has had a sound track! That might make me happy except that it’s the lamest, most insipid music on the planet — somebody’s inside my head playing a big honkin’ Wurlitzer, an organ I didn’t even know was on my personal parts list. It’s been droning on for weeks now, virtually nonstop until I fall asleep. A B3 would be fabulous, but no, this is old-school swirly-wurly all the way. The sedate tempo never varies, the glisses and runs are utterly predictable, the plummy bass notes swell and rumble, every ending abides by a schmaltzy-sounding template. It’s all tediously drama-infused, and just as I reach the edge of madness the tune changes, always transitioning directly from one song to the next, some of which I recognize but most of it painfully generic, although yesterday’s selection was Desperado on ‘ludes and endless loop.
It’s like I’m living in a mortuary or I wandered onto the soundstage of a Gaither Reunion in full-on veneration mode, and very little external input has the power to punch the mute button. This is new territory but it doesn’t feel creepy … yet. My head did thump the ice and concrete fairly aggressively, so there’s that. And there’s all this better living through chemistry that’s been going down for the past month, giving me reason to hope that once my friends morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, cyclobenzaprine, et.al. go back into the closet the music will find a hidey-hole of its own and go there to die. Not all of it (!!), just this mawkish, never-ending recital of every trite melody ever devised. Bizarre, fascinating, and some of the chord progressions are precious, but I’m so over it — can’t I please go back to the sounds of silence up top now? That would be nice.
Meanwhile I’m nothing if not pragmatic, so … ALLLL SKATE!!
To the bone …
10 Feb 2016 2 Comments
This morning I’m feeling inordinately proud of my skeleton. I’ve had doubts about it in the past, but this time, when slip came to slide, my little boney bits marched right into formation and got busy. They were treated to a photo shoot yesterday and the films are gorgeous — all the shattered pieces are in place and getting chummy with each other — what Dr. Pro calls *sticky.* Sans cast or surgery those little guys shouldered (eh?) the job and did what had to be done. Part of my personal staff:
It’s been a sobering month at our house; therefore, good news is primo, and when is it not? So on a sunny day in February it’s fun to know I’ve still got it, even if it’s on the inside where you can’t see it. You know why old people are grouchy? Because they hate getting old, end of story. We try to grace it all up and pretend to be philosophical … mature, ha! … all the while feeling slightly bereft that not very many people can hear or see the eighteen, thirty, forty-five-ish, never-gonna-grow-up real soul that is us. We’re having such a good time! How could the ride be so far down the tracks already?
That’s why we can’t have nice things and the reason we say shit like “Get off my lawn,” and “You’re one smartass comment away from being bitch-slapped so hard Google won’t be able to find you.” We mean well.
I just realized today is Whinesday, which explains everything, sorry not sorry. Enjoy the sunshine — it’s always out there somewhere.
Write what you know, they said …
09 Feb 2016 2 Comments
There was no doubt a time when you thought that just by becoming a grown-up you’d know shit, right? Yeah, me too, and when you’re pocket-size there’s a lot to sort. Turns out Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and adulthood are all fantasies spun to deer-in-the-headlights kiddos, thereby infusing every experience of childhood with a healthy layer of skepticism. And hello, Home Skillet, the more life swoops in and slaps that grin off your face, the deeper the trust issues get. Trust me.
Santa and the big magic bunny didn’t hurt much when I found out the truth about them, especially the rabbit, I mean really. Adulthood, on the other hand, smacks the crap out of us and the only way we make it through for real is knowing somebody has our back. Sitting here this morning trussed up like a Christmas goose I’m asking myself the hard questions, such as … what’s my trustworthiness quotient? How closely do my actions match my words? When people get to know me are they sick with disappointment over the contradictions that begin to show through? All of that matters for every reason in the world.
I adore living, but it’s fairly cold and heartless out there for most of the human race, as you may have noticed, so it feels amazing every time we can change that even a little bit for someone, am I right? Writing what I know and measuring it against what I do, because it would suck to be weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Oh, HEY, how ‘BOUT those Broncos?!
Dear Diary …
07 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
This is one for the record books, my constant confidante — Sunday morning comin’ down, followed by all hell breaking loose. So what’s new, I hear you thinking. I guess when you put it that way, not much.
“On a Sunday morning sidewalk,
I’m wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.
‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone.
And there’s nothing short a’ dying
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleeping city sidewalk
And Sunday morning coming down.”
-Kris Kristofferson
Lately there’s nothing half as lonesome as the KIMN8R taking care of a one-armed wife and one sick puppy. It doesn’t stop, and after this morning’s incredible sunrise and half a cup of coffee the day quickly morphed into a slippery slope to the bottom. Kim’s like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, but the good news is he’s winning.
So, ya’ got your classic Sunday sunrise, great coffee, things are looking up, and before you can absorb all that artistry ya’ got your classic Colossal Sick-Puppy BM-Blowout on a large portion of the new rug, SHAZBOT! just like that. Wow, we didn’t know she had it IN her. Haha, turns out laughing at life is often the only honest response there is.
Maddie and I love and appreciate SuperKim (I understate) not least because we both know we’d be up Shit Creek (haha, right?) without him. He single-handedly — sometimes I crack myself up — got rid of the evidence, wrestled the rug onto the balcony, hit it with the hose (oh my!), draped it out to dry, came inside and made omelets for breakfast. I’m assuming he washed his hands between operations, but that’s barely worth caring about at this point.
The sick and walking wounded are once again tucked in clean and warm, the house restored to a semblance of order, and SuperKim is out foraging for Super Bowl noshes and libations because we are, after all, Americans. There’s sunshine above the clouds and the day is cruising along once again, with the additional bonus of friends coming over later. Life is simple, it’s just not easy.
“But easy’s like, who cares? Easy’s like, how much is easy going to get you?”
― Anne Lamott, Crooked Little Heart
From the bottom, looking up …
01 Feb 2016 7 Comments
Tonight marks two weeks since it all went down, and by down I mean me. It wasn’t pretty, there was never a shot at that, but it did prove something: I am not a true attention whore. I did the whole thing, curtain to curtain, without an audience.
To bring us up to speed since everything slows to a crawl from there, I stepped onto our 4th-floor balcony in the dark, unaware that the light layer of snow I saw was camouflaging a sheet of ice, and ended up doing a fairly incredible amount of damage in record time. Caught a toe on the threshold, crashed onto a heavy metal patio chair with my shoulder, bounced onto the chair arm and introduced it to my rib cage, did a belly-flop onto the snow/ice/concrete, slid to the railing and knocked over a clay pot with my mouth. It had to have been a show worth paying to see.
Making short work of a long, sad, boring tale, let’s just say that I sustained a nasty break to the top of my left humerus where it cradles the ball portion of the joint — it’s shattered into little pieces; rib #7 is cracked; mouth split open, top and bottom; and I’m peppered with various bruises and abrasions. Could have been worse — I didn’t break teeth or jaw, and my glasses stuck the landing instead of free-diving to the parking lot. Not a screw-up I like talking about, really, but some of you have hung in here over the past few years and it doesn’t feel right to leave you in the dark. Luckily, one-handed typing is part of my resumé, so although it’s tiring I can communicate.
The all-girl crew in the ER was outstanding, leaving me to marvel at their skill and knowledge relative to their ages. Who becomes a PA or RN or MD by their early teens? Survey SAYS! — entire gangs of adorable and capable children. They glued my mouth up with artificial skin (up, not shut, sorry not sorry), put my arm in a sling, shot me up with morphine, patted me on the butt and sent me home. Saw an orthopod two mornings later — Dr. Pro, I love that! — and consensus was that surgery would entail plates and screws, would require a far longer recovery, and the shoulder would never feel normal again in this lifetime, so we’re going with time and TLC, taking periodic X-rays to monitor progress. Last Friday’s films show the humerus starting to self-correct its wonky angle, thus cradling the ball closer to kosher, and the pieces at the top are nestled in proper puzzle fashion and starting to get sticky with each other. So far, so good.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m living in Kim’s recliner, reading my eyes out, and doing the maximum-allotted amount of crying and complaining while maintaining a sub-par state of Zen via chemistry. Good shit, man. Doesn’t stop the pain but you feel so much better once you no longer care. Kim’s been with me for almost a dozen years, and on my part it’s been one medical issue after another. He’s patiently (mostly) nursed me through all of it, but what’s especially grievous this time is that it was self-inflicted. Nobody my age wants to feel this stupid. My sense of balance is so compromised that I’ve been known to fall down from a standing-still position, so it would be easy after this mess to lose my nerve and give in to being strictly a spectator. I refuse, however, to look back on 2016 as the year I got old and buried my confidence, so the only choice is to get through it and win, which day by day is seeming more do-able.
And that’s the way it is.
Playing for Time 
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